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Food insecurity in the Latin American region has become a complex problem that significantly impacts people's physical and mental well-being. The factors causing food insecurity are varied, ranging from social, political, and economic causes. Ensuring access to food is not a task with limited responsibilities; on the contrary, both public and private institutions must contribute to creating sustainable and innovative solutions. In general, it is necessary to ensure that the food system flows correctly, ensuring the availability of balanced and nutritious food for the diet of the inhabitants of a given nation. Alternative solutions apart from the government's help include sustainable cultivation, finger millet, and close cooperation with the farmers from the agriculture sector. The present research aims to consolidate theoretical information on the Latin American situation and seek the leading solutions of the parties involved.

Food security reflects the amount of access and availability of healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food and represents a significant problem both nationally and globally. Individuals and families that are considered food insecure experience disparities and inequities in food access and availability and insufficiency in the amount and kind of food required for a healthy lifestyle. We see high food insecurity as a violation of one's rights to a healthy and secure life and a denial of the opportunity for individuals, families, and communities to realize their full potential in society. Thus, we examine food insecurity from three distinct but related perspectives: social responsibility, social justice, and social sustainability. We then explore the link between food insecurity and the “built environment” as needed to shape research, practice, and sustainable solutions in the future.

The objective of this chapter is to discuss the pathways between climate, water, food, and conflict. Areas that are exhibiting food insecurity or have the potential to be food insecure are typically located in areas that experience poverty and government corruption. Higher rates of conflict occur in areas with lower caloric intake and poor nutrition.

We identify key pathways between these variables and discuss intervening factors and compound effects.

The pathways between water, food security, and conflict are complicated and are influenced by many intervening factors. A critical examination of the literature and an in-depth analysis of the reasons for conflict suggest that food insecurity is a multiplier, or facilitator, of the opportunities for and benefits from conflict.

To most effectively reduce the risks of conflict, policies must adequately and simultaneously address each of the four dimensions of food security – availability, stability, utilization, and access. Careful attention to alleviating food insecurity will help alleviate some of the underlying rationale for conflict.

Food security is an essential measure of welfare, especially for low-income families in developing countries. Policy makers should be aware of the harm food insecurity has on vulnerable households. This chapter empirically addresses the problems of measuring and monitoring food security in Mexico.

We identify the macro and micro approaches for measuring food security. The macro approach uses variables at the country level. Usually, this information is available on a yearly basis, is easy to implement, and can be compared across countries. The micro approach uses household questionnaires to collect food security information. Our analysis suggests that a macro approach will not be as precise as the micro approach due to inequality (agroclimatic, social, and economic).

Empirical experience suggests that food insecurity and its severity can be captured at the household level using the Food Insecurity Experiences Questionnaire. This questionnaire allows us to calculate food security measurements that closely follow the food security definition.

From a public policy perspective, the different methodologies for measurement do not consider all the dimensions of food security as defined by the term. This chapter examines which approach provides the best measurement of food security.

Food security was investigated in three villages in rural Ethiopia for smallholder farmers growing staple crops and coffee. Field surveys were conducted through extensive interviews of head of households in three villages in the coffee-growing region of Oromia. We computed basic descriptive statistics and estimated a discrete variable model of the food security status of households and its socioeconomic determinants. We found that commercial input used among smallholders remains sporadic and pricey. Most households produce coffee as a key source of cash income, and rely on a major coffee cooperative to market their coffee. The coffee cooperative helps with transportation costs, eases market participation decisions, and provides better and stable prices. Many farmers rely on credit and banking services offered by the cooperative. These services contribute to food security. Most food-insecure households tend to be headed by females and have severe land constraints. These households also tend to work outside of their own farm more often at lower-return activities than do food-secure households. Despite the fast growing economy of Ethiopia, smallholder households face considerable impediments to improve their economic livelihoods and market participation due to limited land and poor transportation and telecommunications infrastructures. Policies lowering the unit cost and increasing the local availability of commercial inputs for agriculture would be useful to boost staple food production and income generation of smallholders systematically. Better infrastructures and easier access to land would help mitigate food insecurity.

This chapter analyzes and discusses the food insecurity and malnutrition situation in Europe and Central Asia (ECA), with a strong focus on the Caucasus and Central Asian countries.

Authors use descriptive statistics to examine macro-level, sectoral-level, and household-level data from national and international sources to review production, trade, and consumption of food and agricultural products in the selected countries. Overall trends in economic growth and poverty reduction, constraints and bottlenecks in agricultural productivity growth, as well as policies that shape food security in the ECA region are analyzed.

While the countries that constitute the focus of this chapter have shown significant progress in alleviating food insecurity and extreme poverty, many risk factors remain, such as inadequate micronutrient intake, sub-optimal quality diets, growing obesity rates, and high dependence on food imports in a number of the ECA countries.

Based on the assessment of the food security situation in the ECA countries, the authors discuss government actions, including those emanating from various global initiatives, being implemented to reduce food insecurity and malnutrition.

The proliferation of homelessness and housing precariousness, along with a dramatic growth in food banks, are two signs that while parts of the UK economy may be recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and recession, the same cannot be said for the living conditions of much of the poor and working class population. Much of the media discussion has centered on the ways in which these social ills have been caused by government policy, particularly cuts to social and welfare services introduced under the banner of “austerity.” I argue in this paper, however, that a narrow focus on austerity risks obscuring some of the longer-term structural transformations that have taken place under neoliberal capitalism, namely: (1) financialization and (2) the privatization of social reproduction. Situating these two trends within a longer history of capitalism, I argue, allows us to understand the contemporary housing and food crises as specific (and highly gendered) manifestations of a more fundamental contradiction between capital accumulation and progressive and sustainable forms of social reproduction. Doing so further helps to locate the dramatic proliferation of household debt, which has been supported by both processes, as both cause and consequence of the crisis in social reproduction faced by many UK households.

This study assesses distress in the lives of farming population in Ghana's northern interior. Whereas recent studies addressing mental health in Africa produce evidentially sound analyses of the correlated role of food and water insecurity, this study engages with how and why worries over educational costs feature so prominently in a measure of psychosocial well-being. While it is significant that education identifiably figures in escalating the experience with distress, my contention is that what is more important is putting that escalation into the context of why. I use Narotzky and Besnier's framework for understanding the economy as the interactions between crisis, value, and hope to situate a mixed methods study concerned with how distress is proximately shaped by the interactive socioeconomic features of daily life (paying school fees, buying food, cultivating maize, etc.) but ultimately shaped by structural features of the political economy that direct people's objectives amid chronic crisis. My proposition is that because education is where value resides, it is a primary vehicle by which people are acting in crisis in a hopeful manner. In this way, this study leverages the tools of economic anthropology within debates about how to best assess the ways in which health and illness are shaped by socioeconomic realms.

Drawing on initiatives held in various countries, the chapter advocates for a multi-stakeholder approach in making decisions related to food systems. By prioritizing local perspectives, diverse stakeholder participation, and equitable decision-making, this approach ensures policies that are responsive to unique contexts, thus contributing to sustainable and culturally sensitive development. Within these forums, local communities share traditional knowledge and expertise, influencing policy formulation that respects social specifics. Importantly, direct engagement of communities in land use, resource management, and agricultural practices helps preserve territorial identities. The chapter also discusses historical examples where development policies, such as the “green revolution,” disregarded traditional practices and local identity in favor of Western agricultural models. This resulted in negative consequences, including the loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation, and economic vulnerability among small farmers.